suffered. Yet the financial collapse in August 1998 put them too and their prospects in question.
Below them everything went almost unremittingly badly. As already emphasized, the government failed to pay its employees in offices, schools, hospitals, and even in the army and in the prison system, as well as the pensioneers, with the arrears mounting. People survived by moonlighting, frequently holding several jobs at the same time, cultivating garden plots for food, selling what little they had at markets and street corners, and obtaining when possible help from relatives. Industrial workers and miners could not collect their pay and were further threatened by the obsolescence and likely closure or at least revamping and streamlining of their factories and mines. In contrast, for example, to communist China, and plagued by the weakness of the related infrastructure and communication networks, an individualistic peasantry failed to develop. Crime, alcoholism, and illnesses took their toll. In fact, corruption and mafia-style crime have been highlighted by many observers as main obstacles to a successful economic and social evolution of Russia. And throughout the Yeltsin years the country was losing its citizens, often the ablest ones, whether mathematicians or ice hockey players, to a massive migration abroad.
One institution that profited enormously from the fall of communism and has continued to grow and prosper has been the patriarchal Russian Orthodox Church. Of course, all religions and all denominations had reason to celebrate the end of communism, which intended to exterminate them. Whereas only Albania and the Campuchea of the Khmer Rouges declared that program accomplished, other communist states, the Soviet Union very much included, could not be faulted for not trying. Recently available sources underline Lenin's personal hatred for and desire to destroy Orthodox priests and other proponents of the Church, quite in accord with the official ideology and attitude to be continued by his successors. Religion as such was the main enemy, and it is impossible to decide whether the massacre of the Russian priests or of the Buddhist lamas in Outer Mongolia, formally not even part of the Soviet Union, was more horrible.
But because of its importance, size, and geographic extent, Russian Orthodoxy was the greatest sufferer, with uncounted martyrs. It survived, as outlined in preceding chapters, because of the unexpectedly strong support of the faithful, because when total destruction failed, the government instituted a certain compromise accepted by the patriarchal Church, because of the national rally during the Second World War, and other special circumstances. With the fall of communism the Church suddenly emerged from what has been described as the greatest religious persecution in human history to a central and privileged position. At present the Church is favored by Yeltsin and by almost all political parties and groupings, with even Zyuganov and his communists proclaiming that they no longer opposed religion. Its expanding membership includes perhaps one-third of the Russian people, although many of them do not regularly attend services. What is more, repeated polls indicate that the population has a higher regard for and more confidence in the Church than in anything else in the country, be it the government, the armed forces, or the political parties. The Russian Orthodox Church has a fine position and excellent prospects, but it also has many problems.
One of the problems stems from the persecution and aggressive de-Christianization of the Soviet period. The Church is short of everything, and the large-scale construction and restoration of church buildings represents only a portion of the most visible part of its needs. At times the Church seems to operate as a missionary establishment rather than one that recently celebrated a thousand years of its existence. Another complex problem is that of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in newly independent states, such as Ukraine and the Baltic republics. Within the Church there exists a strong and extreme Right wing, characterized among its other qualities by anti-Westernism, anti- Semitism, and isolationism, and headed until his death in 1995 by the second-ranking hierarch of the Church, the Metropolitan of St. Petersburg John. Patriarch Alexis II managed to contain Metropolitan John and his followers and to continue a rather moderate and flexible policy, but the issue between the two points of view has by no means been resolved. There were also problems in relations with the state. As already mentioned, Yeltsin, his government, and most other politicians treated the Church very favorably. Yet the state remained secular, while the Church wanted to play a greater role in education and in general to have Orthodoxy recognized more formally and fully as the religion of Russia. On September 19, 1997, the Duma passed a revised version of what has been described as a religious protection bill, passed soon after unanimously by the Federation Council and signed by Yeltsin, which declared Orthodoxy, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism as the established religions of Russia, and made it more difficult for other religious groups to operate in the country, especially where they had not been previously entrenched over a period of time. Enjoying vast popular support as a proper measure against evangelical Christians, as well as Mormons, Hare Krishnas, and other religious groups which seemed to have flooded Russia in
search of converts after the fall of communism, the bill was internationally denounced as an infraction of the freedom of religion. Its application in practice has been and will be watched closely in many quarters.
It is too early to discuss with any degree of finality and even precision the structure of post-communist Russian culture or its defining traits. One can only mention the immediate impact of the collapse of communism as sweeping in its own way in culture as in politics, economics or foreign policy. Marxism-Leninism disappeared from sight - whatever its underground residue - both as a massive presence in schools and other academic institutions and as the guiding doctrine there and everywhere else. Its teachers turned to more traditional philosophy or history, or switched professions. Instead Russia became immediately open to every conceivable idea and doctrine, with Russian intellectuals reveling in the latest Western views and teachings, but also in the accomplishments of their own Silver Age, continued in emigration by such philosophers as Nicholas Berdiaev. Unfortunately, the new intellectual richness coincided with a diminishing support from the state and general economic decline and even disaster.
In literature, too, of course, old structures, prescriptions, and controls vanished. Regrettably, so did state support. Some observers were disappointed that priceless novels did not appear from their places of hiding once communism had collapsed. But then there was only one Tolstoy and one Dostoevsky. More generally Russian intellectuals complained that once unrestricted commercialism prevailed, the public went after pornography or simply trash, while poets and other writers lost their former positions as centers of attention and inspiration to everything from television to comics. Yet few of them would prefer a return to the former programmed and closed society. Indeed, today Russian literature is already varied, interesting, and rich, and its future looks bright, especially if it is granted a modicum of political stability and economic support. Musicians and other artists have been in a position similar to that of writers, although perhaps favored by their proclivity to travel and by the fact that their languages need no translators.
An interesting phenomenon during the Yeltsin years has been the return of dissenters and other emigres for a visit, a few performances, or more permanently. Many will never forget Vladimir Horowitz in St. Petersburg playing the piano in the very hall where he began his professional career, or - certainly the most celebrated returner and return of all - Alexander Solzhenitsyn coming back to his native land in the summer of 1994 to denounce at close range the new Russia, as he had so effectively denounced its Soviet predecessor.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alliluyeva, Svetlana Isosifovna (1926-) Stalin's daughter. Works include
Armstrong, John A. (1922-) American political scientist. Works include
Baumgarten, Nicolas Pierre Serge von (1887-1939) Russian historian. Works include 'Aux origines de la Russie,'
Bayer, Gottlieb Siegfried (1694-1738) German historian who worked in Russia under Empress Anne. Works
